There isn't anything on a hard drive that can be economically 'refurbished'. So if these had a blown drive, you're getting recertified drive that's had problems before, but tests okay now after a factory reformat. Otherwise you're getting a used hard drive with a new usb controller board. Not really sure which would suck more. Every warranty/recert drive I've ever gotten from anyone died within a few months or a year. Its why hard drive warranties don't matter to me anymore, because whatever they send as a replacement cant be relied on.

Used hard drives are about as good an idea as buying a used transmission on CL. You saved some money, but you'd better do a lot of praying if you're going to do anything important with it.

I'm fully sick of people calling used equipment 'refurbished' because they wiped the dirt off and it seemed to turn on okay. That would be called 'recertified'.

But if it tests okay and you only have it on a few hours a week doing backups you'll hopefully never need, then you saved $20 or $30. Doesn't sound like a good trade.

refurbished can mean anything, does not necessarily have to do with the drive but can be the enclosure, firmware etc. This has a year's warranty, so go ahead and abuse it (do a bunch of benchmark type testing on it) if your're worried and see if it fails...if it does, you're covered. If it fails after doing that after the first year, not sure how you would have confirmed a new one wouldn't have sufferred the same faith.

Buying as-is vs. buying with a warranty are two different things. I wouldn't store anything valueable on this anyway. Always keep a RAID setup for that and use this for all other things you would use box.com or dropbox for. I guess this could work with pogoplug or the like. I use this for storing rips while I move them around to devices etc.

Did you read the newegg reviews? People bought 4-5 of them and had half of them DOA or drop dead in a week or two. Then you should take note of the reviewers comments that say that the manufacturer wants them shipped in the original packaging and these ship out in a box full of styrofoam, not the original packaging. Oh, and then you have to pay to ship them to the manufacturer so as to receive another 'recert' unit.

But it sounds like you're decision devolved to "But I won't put anything important on it, ever", in which case you'll probably be safe.

I'd just pay the extra $20 or $30 and figure I've got a drive that'll still be useful 3-5 years from now, rather than a giant headache that is completely worthless in a year.

rakuten is a much bigger name....just not here in the USA. I doubt they'll ever give up the domain though.

agreed. But what is easier to remember (as far as spelling goes)? Which domain are people more likely to "stumble" onto? I tend to agree that they should have stuck with the domain name buy.com I doubt that the name rakuten will bring more customers. But maybe I am wrong.

This Thread is more than 747 days old. It is very likely that it does not need any further discussion and thus bumping it serves no purpose.If you still feel it is necessary to make a new reply you may do so.
I am aware that this Thread is rather old but I still want to make a reply.

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